Atheism & Conservatism?

A contradiction?

Does atheism entail political liberalism?

Does conservatism entail supernaturalism?

Where we'll go

Who is Razib? Why does he matter?

Who are atheist conservatives? Do they exist?

What does Razib believe? Why?

Why should we accept the importance of political pluralism among non-religious people?

But an aside

To obtain citations or methods for results please go to: razib.com and contact me via one of the available avenues

Where is the Radical Right?

Tom Metzger - “White Aryan Resistance”

Vinayak Savarkar – intellectual founder of Hindu nationalism

Existence as refutation

An atheist can be conservative, and a conservative can be atheist!

Are conservative atheists rare?

The fact that I am speaking before you is also proof...they couldn't find a famous person!

A few examples of a rare breed

Heather Mac Donald

George F. Will (agnostic, we'll claim him!)

Also some non-famous people

50%

31%

20%

Ideology of atheists and agnosticsGSS, year 2000-

LiberalModerateCon-serva-

Always wrong

Almost always wrong

Wrong only sometimes

Not wrong at all

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Wrong for women to get abortion for birth defects

Atheist & agnostic

Not atheist or agnostic

Always wrong

Almost always wrong

Wrong only sometimes

Not wrong at all

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Homosexual sex relations

Atheist & agnostic

Not atheist or agnostic

Always wrong

Almost always wrong

Wrong only sometimes

Not wrong at all

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Is premarital sex wrong?

Atheist & agnostic

Not atheist or agnostic

Illegal to all

Illegal to under 18

Legal to all

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Pornography should be

Atheist & agnostic

Not atheist or agnostic

Always wrong

Almost always wrong

Wrong only sometimes

Not wrong at all

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Sex with person other than spouse

Atheist & agnostic

Not atheist or agnostic

On economic issues divergence is far less stark

1 – Government should reduce

2

3

4

5

6

7 – No government action

0 5 10 15 20 25

Attitude toward income differences

Atheist & agnostic

Not atheist or agnostic

But Razib, you must be a libertarian! You are too reasonable!

This is not Razib, this is a libertarian:

Why I am not a libertarian:

Live not by reason alone!

Most of the human race does not live reflectively

Their actions are driven by impulse & emotion, not rationality

Wrong species

Libertarianism, makes total sense to H. sapiens razib, but is rather confounding to H. sapiens sapiens

“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions”

On the issues:

I oppose affirmative action

I think abortion and gay marriage should be handled legislatively, not through the courts

I am an isolationist

I think the nation-state is a coherent and valuable entity

I think collective attributes (religion, ethnicity, class) are legitimate aspects of human experience which one can value

On the parties

I have voted for Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians

My conservatism is not about partisanship, but is admittedly more philosophical, dispositional, and intellectual

I do not believe that any given election will determine the course of our civilization – there are limits to party politics

Conservative, not RepublicanI am not a conservative

because I think the Republican Party platform will result in full employment in 5 years

I am a conservative because I think Western civilization as it currently organizes itself is a valuable form of human flourishing

Politics as “cognitive style”

Politics as applied sociology

I am not personally particularly conservative in a conventional sense

But I balance my own intuitions about the “good life” against what I believe are the intuitions of the majority

And I accept that I am a social creature, so the intuitions of the majority do hold weight with me

Is consensual incest “wrong”?

Should sex between adult siblings who use contraception (if they are opposite sex) be legally barred?

Many people have a viscerally negative reaction to this, but can not provide rational grounds

And aside from appealing to authorities (“God said it is wrong”) it is difficult to make an argument against this on individualist grounds

Is sex selective abortion “wrong”?

Many people who accept that abortion is not wrong, and perhaps not even troubling, find sex selective abortion disquieting

Is it due the sexism manifest when selection is against female fetuses?

Social harmony matters

Xunzi, third of the great Confucian sages

A materialist, the natural world is all there is

A pessimist about human nature

Emphasized ritual

The altruist can change everything

Mozi, the anti-Confucian

One should love all humans equally

Music, ritual, etc., are wasteful

Conceived of Heaven as relatively similar to Western God

China: 2,000 years of permanence

China maintained a relatively secular political philosophy grounded in respect for tradition, history, and precedent up to the modern era

Though the system ultimately failed because of its inability adapt, Communist China is now sponsoring “Confucius Institutes”

Why did Xunzi “win” and Mozi fail?

Because of his connection to Legalism Xunzi was relatively marginalized in Chinese history, but many historians argue that “State Confucianism” owes more to his variant of the philosophy than that of his predecessors

Mozi seems to have been eminently laudable in his intent. His movement sponsored defense leagues to protect weak cities against the powerful

Xunzi & Mozi : human nature

In the details Confucians were not always right, but because of their reliance on previous precedent they integrated much of what we might term “modal human nature” into their philosophy

In contrast, Mozi's rejection of gradations of love and affection, and the assertion that the arts are wasteful, operated with a faulty view of human nature

Order, integration, cohesion

The Confucian insight is focus on the individual as an atomic element of utility fails to capture the complexity of human affairs

In particular, social relations are of the essence to the proper functioning of human affairs

The rest is commentary

Scrouge McDuck was happier with Huey, Luey, and Duey, than with all

the money in the world)

Wrongness may not be reasonable, and it may not be individual

Sex selective abortion and “safe” incestuous sex may be individually “rational”

But it may not be sustainable for civilization

Making a fetish of coherent rational systems underestimates the complexity of social organisms

Why gay marriage and adult incest are different

Homosexuality is a minority orientation with a strongly biological component (at least in men)

Gay marriage allows individuals to flourish, but does not impinge upon social harmony (most people are not homosexuals)

Most people do not have a strong compulsion to incestuous relationships, but unfortunately sexual abuse through incest is a major social problem

Recognizing the happiness of individual incestuous couples may still cause difficulties as one must consider the example and differentiation between these relatively rare relationships compared to the abusive ones

Yet propositions have to be tested!

There is some literature on the persistence of brother-sister incest in rural Roman Egypt (a legacy of the incest practiced by the Pharaohs)

Further investigation of this phenomenon may allow us to reconsider our intuitions about the social effects of banning adult incest

The logic of the unsystematic thinker

Look for precedent

Look for empirical examples

Avoid absolutes (i.e., talk of “rights”)

Evaluate on the scale of societies

Avoid long chains of inferential propositions (excessive “reasoning”)

Don't confuse the normative and the positive

A plea for irreligious conservatismNon-religious conservatism is

different in substance and style from modern religious conservatism

It occupies a particular position it the ecology of ideas

And notably, it is important to note that the moralistic stridency and certitude of many religious conservatives means they wish to “conserve” very little

“Progress” in antiquity

St. Ambrose vs. Symmachus

4th century debate of the Bishop of Milan vs. the pagan aristocrat in regards to due respect for ancient rites and symbols

A true and progressive future

“It is no disgrace to pass to better things. This alone had I in common with the barbarians that of old I knew not God. Your sacrifice is a rite of sprinkling yourselves with the blood of beasts. Why do you look for the voice of God in dead beasts? Come and learn here on earth a heavenly warfare; we live here, but our warfare is above. Let God Himself, the Creator, teach me the mystery of heaven, not man who knew not himself. Whom should I believe about God, sooner than God Himself? How can I believe you, who confess that you know not what you worship?”

What St. Ambrose had

Certainty

Vision

Clarity

Lack of excessive respect for the past and precedent

Lack of sentimentality

Self-assured rationality

What St. Ambrose and the Church Fathers got right

Roman paganism was steeped in superstition

Its rites were barbaric (e.g., animal sacrifice)

Roman pagan culture was often inhumane (Symmachus' private letters attest to casual purchase of animals and slaves for slaughter in games in the arena)

The Christian “atheists” were right when they denied the gods of the Romans

What they may have gotten wrong

Was pagan culture without redeeming value?

Was Christendom genuinely more humane?

Was the Christian God any less of a farce than Zeus, Isis, or the Platonic One?

Were the superstitious rites and rituals of the pagans less edifying than the “pageantry” of the Roman Catholic Church?

It's a matter of perspective

We can look back with hindsight and see who was right or wrong, using our own yardsticks

But we don't always know where we are right or wrong

Excessive certitude of our rational faculties outside of mathematics and the physical sciences is a recipe for overreach and hubris

Between 400 and 1700 the West forgot the wisdom of allowing religious pluralism to flourish. Pluralism was a custom and tradition forgotten in the service of “better things”

In sum:

What is the “good life” is no easy thing to be calculated through inferences from axioms which you derive from introspection

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it may wind back and forth (e.g., religious pluralism)

There are no ultimate truths in human affairs but for what humanity makes

Never forget that we can all be wrong!